Here is a sampling of the responses our Facebook friends — at facebook.com/meridianstar — shared about their memories of Hurricane Katrina.    

    I lived in Northwood Apartments at the time. When the power went off everyone came out of their apartments. We had a lot of people with drinks and food in the freezers so we fired up the grills and had a heck of a party, sitting on the porches watching the trees fall. Probably not the brightest moments of my life but we had a great time. Me and my wife started dating about a week later. We are married and have 2 kids now! I have fond memories of that time in my life!

Jeremy Warren

Meridian

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    We didn’t have power for two weeks, but we used power inverters to run a fan and the TV so that we didn’t miss “Lost”!

Rachelle Munn Lashley

Meridian

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    The power was restored on my birthday. Best birthday gift ever.

James Norris Scott Jr.

Meridian

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    I found out I was pregnant with my first child the day after Katrina hit. Since my husband was working for the power company, he wasn’t at home except just to sleep, I didn’t think it was right to tell him. Didn’t want him to worry. That was the hardest secret to keep!

Julie Harper Godwin

Hattiesburg (hometown is Meridian)

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    We sat and watched the trees fall all around us and prayed! Our house was spared but a neighbor wasn’t so lucky. His house was damaged but he was not hurt. We filled the hours after by delivering ice and food to those who weren’t as fortunate. Used an inverter in the car for TV and got to know a few more of our neighbors. With heat being the exception, I’d say we gained some life lessons and made it through fine.

Bryan Tennyson

Meridian

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    My family pulled our mattresses onto the back porch to try to stay cool during the night. We had a small generator and ran the TV and a couple of fans on it. We luckily didn’t have much damage, so all in all it was like a hot, not very fun camping trip. Oh, and can’t forget my friend taking a bar of soap outside and “showering” in the rain in our front yard.

Deanna Smith Landrum

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    I lived in an apartment in Marion at the time and my husband (fiance’) at that time lived in Quitman. A tree fell on the house he was renting so he came up and stayed with me. We have been together ever since and have been married going on 3 years now. Even though it was bad in many ways it also left me with happy memories.

Donnie and Cheryl Owens

Philadelphia

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    Those who helped others during Katrina:

    I remember having to drive form north Mississippi to Meridian to bring relatives a generator and a 75-gallon barrel of unleaded gasoline … and having to four-wheel drive through the busted timber and terrain upon hitting Lauderdale County on U.S. 45, all of the way to College Park. That was an interesting day. It was then that I realized the whole broad impact of the storm.

Christopher Michael

Carpenter

Tupelo

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    I remember the trees also; we had no power for 2 weeks. I also remember how scared I was because it was the first time I ever remember it getting that bad here. And the people on the Gulf Coast, how I worried so for them. But I also saw a lot of good come out the the storm. Because after it was all over friends and neighbors came together to help one another.

Lisa Smith Blackwell

Meridian

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    I lived in Ocean Springs when Katrina hit. We evacuated the night before to Georgia where our family resides. For two days, we took donations from the people of Moultrie,Ga. We took seven pick-up trucks, three cars and one 24-foot Budget rental truck to Ocean Springs. The vehicles were loaded with pallets of bottled water, clothes, baby formula, canned foods, personal hygiene items and just about everything you can imagine. My family and I went around our neighborhood, and it was so heartbreaking to find so many people without. There were diabetics with no food, babies with nothing to eat. It was just horrible. People were begging for water, for food, just anything to get them by. I could not believe the American Red Cross hadn’t been there. After disbursing our goods and salvaging what we could from our home, we rode through D’Iberville and Biloxi. The Ocean Springs/Biloxi bridge that I used to travel across every day for work at the IP was demolished. Casino barges were tossed across Hwy 90, three blocks from where they originally were. The roads were busted up, nothing but slabs where homes used to be. Red Cross workers were in their air-conditioned vehicles putting on their make-up for an interview. In D’Iberville, Salvation Army volunteers were set up in their trailers, making hot meals for people. Probably 200 people were lined up when we saw them. That day changed my life. I was much more grateful for the things I did have. Handing the items out that we worked so hard to collect gave me an indescribable feeling. The recipients of all the things were so grateful. Just seeing these people smile was like a little sigh of relief for them.

Samantha Sadler Apperson

Ocean Springs

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    The memory that has really stuck with me is from a few days after, when we went to Birmingham. Interstate 20 going west was packed with emergency vehicles, fire trucks, National Guard vehicles, power company vehicles from everywhere, trucks pulling boats and jet skis, pick-up trucks loaded with stuff and one small blue Toyota truck loaded with mattresses dragging its tail. Later we saw a Fire Department of New York unit headed to New Orleans. I can’t describe the feeling all this gave me.

    We took supplies to Laurel on Saturday and the amount of damage Katrina caused became much more apparent. When we got power and could watch the news I was so pissed off at the talking heads asking why government hadn’t been “Johnny on the spot” with relief. Anyone who walked around since and seen the number of trees down would know that nothing could move until the roads were cleared. I don’t remember seeing footage of any of them with chainsaws in hand waiting for it to be over.

Ronnie Goss

Graduate of R.H. Watkins High School in 1967

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    I could write a book. It still pains me to remember the days after: having a 1,200 square-foot house full of refugees (about 13 plus us) the second night after; seeing the first images on the computer because it was the only news source we had; finally hearing from friends who were still working in and stuck at Hancock Medical Center; finding a friend’s husband drowned in the house in Bay St Louis; seeing all the places that were just no longer there… slabs; finding another friend’s father in a shelter; seeing a fish in a mud puddle in the middle of the road a long way from any water; driving all the way back to Collinsville from Kiln to get gas to take back to the coast because you could not get any south of here; driving over the railroad tracks in Long Beach and finding nothing but slabs and sticks; going to New Orleans and seeing everything streets empty (except for water); visiting friends in October when they were still living in a tent in their front yard; and crying the next spring because we had flowers and I knew that all of my friends down there had none, nothing green at all. There are good memories, too, of all the help we were able to provide and the volunteers who came from all over to help: Walmart in a tent; Pearlmart (the relief center in Pearlington); seeing Mississippians pull together and help each other and rebuild. Hancock County is doing remarkably well, considering Bay St. Louis, Waveland and Pearlington seem to be in better shape than Pass Christian, Long Beach and Gulfport, at least near the beach areas. There’s still a long way to go but still one of my two favorite places to visit.

Tricia Soule’ LaBiche

Collinsville

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    Those who braved the elements:

    Watching the trees fall on the fences, then running out there to cut the trees off the fences and mending the fences so that our horses couldn’t get out!

Leslie Joyner

Lauderdale County

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    I remember being at my parents’ house, watching the shingles of the neighbor’s house start lifting off the roofs. We were then amazed when a huge piece of roofing flew into the back yard, but it wasn’t long before we realized that huge piece of roofing belonged to our house. Oh what fun it was trying to get on top of the house to lay a tarp down in the middle of the hurricane. Needless to say that part of the house was totally ruined.

Damen Regan

Jackson (hometown is Meridian)

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    I was by myself in my house. I did a lot of praying! A large tree from across the street fell in my yard. It was wrapped around my car on three sides (only 1 inch to 3 inches of clearance in places) and yet never touched my car. Prayer works!

Leslie Jenkins

Meridian

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    I remember sitting at the city barn watching the horizontal rain, hearing transformers popping all around and hoping my family was OK, then trying to sleep in my truck while we waited for it to calm down enough to go to work, then spending the next 48 hours straight getting started rebuilding traffic lights. Good times! Good times.

Dan Pierce  

Hattiesburg (hometown is Collinsville)

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    I was working at Rush Hospital in the lab and got there at 6 a.m. They let all of us go home at 11 a.m. before it got really bad. I went to my ex-husband’s grandmother’s house and watched the weather on the porch in the Tuxedo community. There is a church that we watched the siding get ripped off for hours! The funniest part was when the grandma decided we needed to get out and have something to eat. She chose Waffle House right down the road. We tried to convince her that if we didn’t have power that they probably didn’t have any either. She just couldn’t believe that everyone was without power! She thought we were the only ones! Lucky for us we had a generator that we plugged the microwave into and heated up Spaghetti-Os and ravioli for the rest of the night. My house was without power for about four days and we had the Okatibbee Creek flood in our back yard, almost 5 feet of water! Hope we never have to go through anything like that again!

Tessanna Lee Grayson

Quitman (hometown is Meridian)

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    Those who received help during Katrina:

    Anderson Hospital was very generous to my family, I am an employee and they allowed me and my family as well as other employees and their families to stay overnight and shower at the hospital. The hospital was a lifesaver to us at a time we had no power no water and no air conditioning. I am thankful to work with such an outstanding hospital.

Celina Waller Reed

Meridian

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    People who lived on coast:

    I was born and raised in Biloxi so evacuating for the storm was like an every-year thing. We never took it seriously. We waited till the evening before to evacuate and it took us 11 hours to get to Panama City. The morning of, we were watching the news and seeing that where we have lived our entire lives was demolished! Thank God we lived north of the interstate and our home was just a little damaged compared to others. It took us three hours to cut our way through to get to our home. We were without power for more than a month. It was devastating! But we thank God every day that we didn’t stay and our hearts go out to the ones who lost everything!

Jennifer Ware McAdams

Biloxi

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    My memory of Katrina is that I was in it, and hearing winds and shingles blowing off the roofs of homes. It is a scary feeling. I lived on the beach and I stayed at my apartment and rode it out. I lost all of my furniture and I lived from it. If you have never been in one, you don’t want to.

Mary Nichols

Greenville

    Near misses and those lost:

    My parents were visiting from Shuqualak. My son, Jake, was 9 months old and I had just laid him on the changing table and taken his diaper off to change him when a tree fell from our back yard across our house into the nursery where we were. We escaped without a scratch, praise the Lord! Our home was severely damaged, as was my daddy’s car that was in the front yard. We were out of our home for six months. It was an ordeal but we feel very blessed that only material things were damaged. God was very much with us!

Allison Jernigan Newell

Meridian

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    I remember standing on my back porch with my daughter and watching trees fall and the several thousand dollars of damage it did to my house and property, and of course the week without power. But the main thing I remember is that my good friend Jimmy Gower was killed as a result of the storm.

David Ware

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    Katrina is a bad memory of the loss of my nephew, Sgt. Joshua Russell, who was killed on the way home from a rescue mission in Biloxi, when his Hummer was hit by a power line, tearing the top off the truck and striking him in the head. He left a wife and two young sons behind.

Jacki Curry

Meridian (hometown is Petal)

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    That day was horrible for lots of people. I was pregnant with my middle daughter and man, was I miserable. Our oldest daughter ran outside watching it. She had never been so excited and scared at same time. Then she got so bored she asked her daddy to come play the Playstation with her and there’s no power, ha! The thing that stands out the most to me is that it was my daddy’s (Wayland McMullen) birthday! Little did we know it would be his last, but we sat on the porch and told stories like we always had and even with such a bad experience I remember that day with him! He passed Dec. 22 of that year. Many people lost everything during Katrina as well as losing their loved ones. It must be hard on so many as its anniversary approaches. Prayers will always be with them!

Bethany Culpepper

Hattiesburg

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    My memories of Katrina are good memories, even though we had it bad here in Butler. But we made the best of the worst. My children put a 10-foot trailer under the carport and made a bed on it so they could sleep at night without burning up so bad. One bad memory is that my step-daughter was sitting in a chair and decided to get up and get something to drink and just as she had walked 3 feet from the chair, the wind blew the shutter off the wall and the shutter went right through the chair. If she had been sitting there still it would have killed her from the sharp splinters that came from the shutter. But all through it all we learned that we had to do with what we didn’t have, so we made the best out of a terrible thing and we lived to tell it. My girls and I enjoyed playing in the rain and seeing how the wind could push us. These are the kind of memories that last of the good ones. But never, ever do I want to see it that bad again.

Belinda Arlene Hoffman Strickland

Butler, Ala.

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    Frustrations:

    The insurance company never paid for my new roof and still refuse to.

Cassandra Anderson Meridian

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    I moved from Meridian to New Orleans just a few months before Katrina only to lose everything to the storm. My life hasn’t been the same since. Katrina took more from me than material things; it took the life I made and home I made in New Orleans. It broke everything but my spirit and faith in God.

Teresa Cole-Coleman

Beacon, N.Y. (hometown is Meridian)